- By the Franklin Historical Society
In 1920, William Roulston gifted two acres on the corner of East Street and Stadium Drive
comprised of a private park, complete with tennis court and shrubbery, to the people of
Pukekohe for a war memorial.
The deed of conveyance included a proviso that the sum of £500 through voluntary public subscription be spent on an appropriate memorial. A report in the local paper after a council meeting, in September 1920, urged that the memorial “be of a purely memorial nature, and not … submerged in the factors of pleasure or convenience of the living, as distinct from a lasting and noble tribute to the memory of the dead,” a reminder for us, as we observe Anzac Day, to remember and value the sacrifice of those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
The mayor announced that “The park would always be known as Roulston Park.”
Funds were raised by public subscription to build the memorial gates, and they were officially opened on November 6, 1921, by then-Prime Minister William Massey before a crowd of some 3000. There was some dismay that the figure portrayed on the gates did not resemble a Kiwi soldier and that it was “a stock size Italian soldier in the field dress
uniform of his country”.
Once again, the community undertook fundraising, and after a shipping delay due to a seamen’s strike, the replacement Italian marble panel was finally installed in 1925.
After the opening of the Pukekohe War Memorial Town Hall in November 1958, the Hall
became the venue for Anzac Services. In 1980, the central pillar from Roulston War Memorial Park was relocated to the War Memorial Town Hall. The gates and the panels on either side, recording the names of 51 local men who served their country and lost their lives, had also been removed. These names are now recorded on the Memorial Chaplet at the RSA Cemetery adjacent to Pukekohe Cemetery.
Sir Philip Gibbs (1877-1962), a noted British war correspondent, wrote at the time that
“The war memorial should be something which should arrest the mind of the passer by with the thought of those young ghosts who must haunt the spirit of the nation for all time unless there is forgetfulness of valour and carelessness of tragedy. … The essential spirit of every scheme should be ‘For Remembrance.’”
It is to be hoped that the current upgrade of the park does not overlook the purpose for which Mr Roulston gifted the park to the people of Pukekohe and that it features a suitable and fitting reminder visible to all who pass by.
Sources: Pukekohe & Waiuku Times.
